CONTINGENCY plans kicked into action last week as an
underground fire in Manchester brought down 130,000 telephone lines, bringing
disruption to businesses and homes across the city.
The blaze, which damaged BT cables, is estimated to
have cost businesses £4.5 million a day.
Travel 2/4 shipped 26 staff to its London office and
14 to Glasgow to take calls for tailor-made, first class, business class and
admin support. The operator’s main reservation lines were switched to its
Glasgow office.
Sales director David Holland could not put a figure on
costs or lost business, but said the main priority was getting booking lines up
and running again.
“A lot of agents didn’t know what was happening. We
called as many as we could, with many calls made on our own mobile phones as
BT’s O2 mobile network was also badly affected.”
Holidays By Phone, located in the Arndale Tower in the
centre of Manchester, has not been able to make or receive calls since the
fire, last Monday. Calls were re-routed to homeworkers and to its call centre
in Darlington.
Retail director Ewan Mochrie said: “We have lost
revenue. Customer service has also been hit because the department is based in
central Manchester.”
Altrincham-based Cresta said it could make the odd
outgoing call, but was unable to receive incoming calls. Calls to Cresta’s duty
office and reservations department were re-routed via Birmingham.
Business travel agent Five Star Travel, based in
Princess Street, said lines had been down since last Tuesday and it had been
unable to access Galileo, the Internet or e-mail. “We hope the situation will
rectify itself because we have a lot of tickets to issue and I’m reluctant to
go back to the airlines,” said managing director Ian Toomer.
Travelcare said its Quest booking system had gone down
in a couple of branches.
MyTravel said a number of shops had lost phone lines,
but said it was more of an “inconvenience” than a disruption.
A BT spokesman said it was unable to comment on
compensation arrangements.